


M.A.D.

by LunaKat



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions
Genre: Angst, Atheism, Existentialism, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Screw Destiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 13:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16766212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/LunaKat
Summary: "So I'm, like, your beta tester," he says, a little sickened by the realization. "I'm the blade sharpener to your sword."





	M.A.D.

**Author's Note:**

> First written in a spur sometime in August 2017.

**m** utually **a** ssured **d** estruction

.

.

.

"I don't _get_ you!" Touya finishes harshly, his throat raw from screaming.

The moon reflects in N's grey eyes, mirror-like and glassy. His eyes always look so dull to Touya, unless he's talking about something he's passionate about, like liberation or maths or Ferris Wheels—then they light up like distilled starlight, and it's those instances when he looks breathtaking.

This isn't one of those instances, though. N's eyes are dulled, and his smile is a small, toothless curve of the lips—feigned politeness, hardly a natural phenomenon. His pale skin is aglow in the moonlight, and its watery light washes his hair out so it looks silver instead of green. Even his white shirt glows brilliantly, as though under blacklight. He looks cold and heavenly and distant, like a god carved out of unfeeling marble.

Touya, by contrast, is standing in the shade, under an interlocking web of embracing branches that casts a veil of shadow over him. Between his brown hair and eyes and the tan color of his skin, he looks dark and ominous, as though he's wearing a veil of darkness—like some dark, sinister beast, or a murderer waiting in the woods for his next victim.

 _Black and white_ , Touya thinks wryly, irritably. It always comes back that, in the end, doesn't it? That dichotomy, that duality, that principle of opposites and parallels. Black for the villain, white for the Hero. Except they're both meant to be Heroes, apparently, and N commands a dragon as dark as pitch, while the capsule of its ivory counterpart still weighs heavily in Touya's bag.

Touya's just come from Ophelucid with the intent of learning how to awaken the white dragon, but so far he only knows it involves worthiness and a fierce dedication to the truth, and it's infuriating because you'd think there would be some sort of ancient how-to guide, a fucking manual, _something_. So, as if the fact that N magicked a dragon-god from a _dinky black rock_ of all things isn't freaking him out _enough_ , there's also _that_ to stress him out, and, and, and...

Route Ten is quiet tonight, the night sky picturesque. He'd wandered into the woods, far from his campsite, with the intent of calming his tumultuous thoughts and immerse himself in the calming aura of forests, breathe in the scent of loam and growing things to ease the anxiety gnawing at him. What he was not expecting was to find his self-proclaimed adversary and Hero of Ideals, absent of his draconic partner and for once content to be the listener between the two of them.

So Touya ranted, raved and poured out every drop of anxiety that was eating him alive—all his fear and hysteria and fury at N for dragging him into all this destined Hero nonsense in the first place. He didn't even believe in all this legendary crap, didn't believe in the myths that made up his childhood bedtime stories or cosmic chessboards or Heroes or ancient, deific dragons who embodied brutal veracity and unyielding idealism.

And he isn't done. "Like, the hell are you even _thinking_? Drayden says the Dragons nearly destroyed Unova all those centuries ago! If _we_ fight now, then there's a chance—t-there's a _chance_..."

He trails off, biting his lip. N isn't smiling politely anymore, his features schooled into a neutral mask.

 _There's a chance we could kill everyone_ , Touya doesn't say. He doesn't have to. _You talk about separating Pokémon and people, but we'll probably wipe them all out if we do this._

N lets out a soft exhale. "You still don't seem to understand how this works, Touya."

Oh, god. Here we go.

"Truth and Ideals are meant to clash," the king continues matter-of-factly, oblivious to Touya's exasperated eyeroll. Or, at the very least, ignoring it. N actually notices a lot more than he lets on. But if he does notice, he doesn't mind it, and progresses with his lecture. "The old battle was never finished, and the Dragons demand closure. That is why they chose new Heroes. I have been chosen by Zekrom, and you have seemingly been chosen by Reshiram. This was all meant to come to pass, regardless of your objections."

Touya's eye twitches at the word "seemingly". "Fuck you."

N is unperturbed by Touya's harsh language, and instead averts his gaze upward, to the sprawling expanse of the Milky Way. And it's then that Touya notices it—there's no distilled-starlight glow in N's eyes, like there should be when he talks about cosmic destinies and the inevitability of fate and how glory awaited the victor of this grand clash. His eyes are dull as they rove the sky, and Touya thinks he catches a glint of fear.

"...you said I was chosen," Touya says slowly. "For what? I still don't get it."

N sighs exasperatedly, as though he's having to explain to a child the same thing repeatedly, and Touya bites down his indignance as the king's gaze flicks back to him. "There must be _equilibrium_. The Hero of Ideals cannot exist without the Hero of Truth."

"Sure you can," Touya retorts, and uses "you" instead of "they or "he" as he would have in the past. Because now they are not talking hypotheticals. They are talking about them, N and Touya, real people in real life, storybook characters existing in reality. "You don't _need_ me. If there was _really_ an equilibrium, Zekrom wouldn't have woken up unless Reshiram was waking up at the same time. Hell, I haven't even figured out how to wake up Reshiram yet"—he belatedly realizes that's probably not something you should admit to your designated adversary, uh, whoops—"and Zekrom _still_ woke up! What if I _never_ wake up Reshiram, huh? What happens _then_?"

"Then you will lose," N says matter-of-factly, as though they're talking about the weather and not a war for power over Unova.

First of all, it would be _suicidal_ for Touya to even consider confronting that obsidian electric monstrosity N summoned in Dragonspiral Tower without the aid of his own Dragon, and as reckless and concerned with helping those in need as he is, he likes to think he isn't _that_ utterly stupid.

Second of all, N is _completely missing the point_ , as per fricking usual.

"But Zekrom will _still be awake_ ," Touya snaps, growing very irritated with N's crypticity and general inability to answer Touya's questions. N is an excellent speaker, no doubt, but he never seems to explain things in a way that Touya can understand, never explains how he comes up with these ideas. He just says things, and then expects Touya to immediately understand every significance, every underlying train of thought, every emotional undercurrent. It's _exhausting_. "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, _just maybe,_ we're _not_ destined to 'clash' or whatever? Maybe just _one_ of the Dragons is meant to wake up and that's it!"

N looks at Touya with such derisive condescension that Touya might as well have been a bug under N's shoe. "Don't be stupid."

Touya growls in exasperation. "I'm just _saying_."

"The Dragons are meant to clash. It's really that simple."

" _Is_ it?"

"Yes."

Touya regards N for a moment. N has the perfect edict of a king, one who never lets his emotions show and commands with enough force to make you obey. But he doesn't radiate power the way Touya expects a king to, and in the darkness of the woods on Route Ten, in this moonlit grove where the stars shimmer and the shadows envelop, N looks... frail, almost. Delicate. A porcelain doll about to be smashed to pieces.

What a morbid thought.

"Why do we have to?" Touya's voice is low, quiet. "Why do you _want_ to?"

N arches a brow, waiting for Touya to go on, so Touya goes on.

"I mean, if I don't awaken Reshiram, your rule or whatever will go uncontested. No one on earth'll be able to beat you—not with a god by your side. So why? Why do we need to clash?" Touya swallows thickly. "Why do you want me to try and _stop_ you?"

The silence stretches. N looks back at the stars.

"When under duress, a mere lump of carbon can become a diamond," N says lightly, as though this isn't heavy ground, as though these questions aren't loaded with all sorts of implications and fate and a perilous endgame that is fast approaching, a storm in the works that is churning, churning, churning—just waiting to explode into havoc and chaos. In fact, there's a hint of a _laugh_ in his tone, as though amused at the notion, and that chills Touya in so many ways he can't even count. "When one has ideals, it is only natural to expect them to be tested. That is where you come in, Hero of Truth."

Touya's gut twists at the title. He hates it. He hates all of this. Dragons and kings and crowns and heroic sobriquets. He wants things to go back to the way they were before the night on the Ferris Wheel, when he was just Touya Kokuen, a random Trainer among a vast sea of youths with the same dream as him, and N was just some enigmatic traveler with seemingly no regard for personal space and spoke wistfully of a better world that would likely never be. Back before the fate of Unova was resting on his shoulders and he could just sit there, debating with another person whose mind was vast and quick, whose eyes sparkled with passion, who spoke with a hushed passion that sent goosebumps up his spine. Back before there was hero and villain, protagonist and antagonist and all the other "agonist"s.

"So I'm, like, your beta tester," he says, a little sickened by the realization. "I'm the blade sharpener to your sword."

N nods without taking his eyes off the sky. "I told you—you were chosen."

Touya's mouth feels dry.

"...I still could've been that without Reshiram, though." His voice is small now, like that of a scared little boy. And that's what he is, really, a scared little boy in borrowed armor, marching into a war too big for him. "You want me to wake Reshiram—why? So we can be on equal footing?"

Again, N nods.

"...when you told me to find Reshiram—at Dragonspiral Tower? You made it sound like something else," Touya says quietly. He can't bring it within himself to raise his voice, to speak over the rustle of the forest and the coo of nocturnal creatures. He's not even sure if he wants to broach this subject, but curiosity outweighs common sense. "Like—Like you were expecting me to challenge you, a-and beat you or something."

N chuckles lightly, but it lacks mirth or humor. His eyes are flat and still painfully dull. "I am going to defeat you. That's all there is to it. We will clash, and I will win."

Touya keeps going, still afraid but a little bolder, gathering nerve. "Fine. Sure. Whatever. But... you made it sound like you wanted us to _destroy_ each other."

N's gaze snaps back onto Touya, his eyes wide. For the longest time, he just stares and says nothing, as if awed by the very suggestion.

Then his face twists into an irritated scowl. "Don't be ridiculous. Why would I want that?"

Touya swallows. "You tell me."

Because for just a moment, he could have sworn that something in N's gaze, for even a fraction of a second, said that it's _exactly_ what he wants.

Touya fights a shiver.

N snorts derisively and turns away, signalling an end to the conversation. "Within the next week, you will find me at the home of the Elite Four—if you make it, which I don't doubt that you will. When you arrive, I will be Champion, and I will be expecting you."

 _Try and wrest control of the world from me_ , N doesn't say. He doesn't have to. _Try and tear apart the very foundation that I stand upon—I dare you._

He starts to leave.

"Why are you even _out_ here?" Touya grumbles. For some reason, he suddenly realizes just how sleep-deprived and irritable he is, and wants nothing more than to get some damn answers and then curl up under some blankets and _sleep_ for a year. He knows he's asking a lot of questions, and he knows he's probably pissing N off, but he's stopped caring what N thinks a few weeks ago when the king summoned the draconic embodiment of idealism and then smiled like that was all _perfectly fucking normal_.

N pauses and glances over his shoulder. His face is smooth, but Touya can see the irritation lingering in his eyes. N's eyes betray everything about him. "I was here with my chosen companions, preparing for the day of change, when Ideals would rule the land."

Touya blinks. Blinks again. Without all the mumbo-jumbo in between, it almost sounds like...

He huffs a little laugh. "A-Are you saying— Are you saying you were _training_?"

N Harmonia, king of a cult who is so anti-training that the members will resort to pulling swords on unsuspecting Trainers, is training. Oh, _god_ , the _freaking_ _irony_.

"I take this very seriously." N's eyebrows rise. "You should too."

And then N is gone, and Touya is alone in the shade of this hidden grotto, blinking in the shadows.

Touya looks up at the sky, at the ripple of the Milky Way and the stardust glitter of the night sky, crushed silver sprinkled across liquid black. He has never believed in myths and legends, but for the first time he wonders if there really _are_ gods up there. If there really _is_ a celestial realm where beings of impossible might overlooking the mortal sphere, if there _are_ entities that embody Time and Fate and if they are looking down on humans now—filled with pride at the misery they have bestowed upon mortals, while they themselves are untouched by things like death and struggle and inevitability.

He hopes not. He doesn't think he could stay sane in world like that, where in the end the choices you make don't matter. Where you are bound by the whims of some divine being who spares you out of boredom or fucks with you out of amusement.

N wants him to train, apparently. To grip this destiny that's been thrust upon him and take it full-throttle, to take it into his own hands. To be better, to be stronger, for the time when they finally do meet in this endgame of cosmic chess. To fully accept this new power, this draconic embodiment of truth that lays dormant in his bag.

Touya reaches for it before remembering that it's back at his camp. It's a new weapon, a sword to wield in the final clash, when they will stand as equals.

But still, N wants him to train.

"All the better to destroy you with," Touya murmurs, feeling sick and scared and so, so tired.

No one is around to hear him.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for not being as active this month. Been on an intense FMA kick lately. Anyway, happy holidays!


End file.
